October 22-28, 2012

Newsletter

October 22, 2012

Faculty News

Awards & Honors:

Carl Landwehr, lead research scientist at the SEAS Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute, was inducted into the national Cyber Security Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Baltimore, MD, on October 17. More on Carl and his accomplishments are on its site and the CSPRI site. Congratulations, Carl!

Conferences and Presentations:

Prof. Erica Gralla (EMSE) recently attended two conferences: the INFORMS Annual Meeting (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), held October 14-17 in Phoenix, AZ, and the 4th International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM), held October 11-14 in Washington, DC (co-hosted by the GW School of Media and Public Affairs). At INFORMS, Prof. Gralla presented "Assessing Tradeoffs Among Multiple Objectives for Humanitarian Aid Delivery Using Expert Preferences," with co-authors Jarrod Goentzel and Charles Fine of MIT. At the Crisis Mappers Conference, Prof. Gralla co-organized a workshop on "Field Based Decision Makers' Information Needs in Sudden Onset Disasters," with colleagues from MIT, the Assessment Capacities Project, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Prof. Zoe Szajnfarber's (EMSE) research associate, Anthony Wicht, presented a paper at the International Astronautical Congress, held in Naples, Italy, on October 5. The paper, which was co-authored with Ph.D. student Isabel Bignon and Prof. Szajnfarber, is titled "Exploring R&D Investment as a Space Sector Technology Management Lever."

Other News:

This video from Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) shows flight operations conducted as part of his joint US Naval Academy and GW ship air wake research program.

Other News:

The GW Institute for Nanotechnology (GWIN) is pleased to announce the call for proposals from University faculty interested in nanotechnology research. This competition is primarily for junior faculty to help them establish an active research program. Funds may be requested for faculty summer support, equipment, supplies, and salary for postdoctoral researchers and research assistants. Funds must be used by June 30, 2013. Award can be up to $10,000. GWIN expects to fund one proposal. Proposals are due to Prof. Michael Keidar, GWIN director, by 5:00 pm, Thursday, November 8, 2012. Electronic submissions are required.

“Rapid Disaster Victim Identification in Mass Fatality Incidents: Decision-Support Tool to Facilitate Human Remains Identification,” the doctoral thesis findings of Sergio de Cosmo, Ph.D., a recent graduate of the EMSE doctoral program, was recently published in the American Medical Association's Journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Emergency Preparedness. The article was co-authored by Sergio’s doctoral adviser, Prof. Joseph Barbera (EMSE). The "next generation" victim identification process proposes both qualitative improvements to make data gathering more objective and quantitative methods to rapidly select best matches between files from missing persons and the file from a single set of unidentified human remains. This work is being considered for application by Interpol and a range of U.S. based organizations responsible for mass fatality incident response.

Guest Vignette:

Prof. Erica Gralla (EMSE) studies decision-making in humanitarian supply chains and other urgent, uncertain environments. Her research program aims to understand and build upon the strengths of human intuition and mathematical modeling to improve decision-making.

In recent research with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Prof. Gralla studied transportation planning for aid delivery in response to large-scale emergencies, such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. To understand the strengths and weaknesses of human decision-makers, she observed teams of experienced humanitarian logisticians in a simulated emergency response (a WFP training program). Her observations record how logisticians discussed the best ways to utilize their fleet of trucks and helicopters and how they debated the prioritization of aid cargo deliveries. Using grounded theory and visual mapping, she identified patterns of decision-making behavior, then modeled them to evaluate their effectiveness. The study highlighted the importance of goals in guiding transportation planning, and Prof. Gralla built upon these results to develop new objective functions for aid delivery optimization, which quantitatively trade off the multiple goals identified by human decision-makers. The results also brought to light some simple yet effective decision-making strategies that build upon human intuition, and highlighted areas where decision support could enable better transportation planning. Prof. Gralla is currently working with WFP to develop training and decision support tools for transportation planning in future emergencies. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Erica Gralla of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)

Guest Lecture: “The Role of the National Science Foundation in Developing Innovative Technology through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants”
Dr. Errol Arkilic, Program Manager for Industrial Innovation and Partnerships, National Science Foundation
Thursday, November 15
6:00 - 7:00 pm
Room B-07, Media and Public Affairs (MPA) Bldg.
Sponsored by the SEAS Clark Engineering Scholars Program